Recording for the Blind closing Oak Ridge office

Recording For The Blind & Dyslexic in Oak Ridge is closing its 205 Badger Road office over the next two weeks.

by Beverly Majors and Darrell Richardson/Staff

Recording For The Blind & Dyslexic in Oak Ridge is closing its 205 Badger Road office over the next two weeks.

The more than 60-year-old local institution — currently called Learning Ally — will reportedly close due to financial issues.

“We’re closing eight studios in the U.S. because of financial issues, changes in technology and the way students now get materials,” Learning Ally production director Cecella “CC” Morris told The Oak Ridger on Wednesday.

The nonprofit volunteer organization produces and maintains a library of educational accessible audiobooks for people who cannot effectively read standard print because of visual impairment, dyslexia or other disabilities. Wikipedia reports that a volunteer force of about 5,000 people records more than 6,000 titles annually into the digital audiobook library, which in 2012 contained nearly 75,000 titles in a broad variety of specialty and academic subjects.

According to a letter to local volunteers, which was provided to The Oak Ridger on Wednesday, Learning Ally president & CEO Andrew Friedman stated, “I am writing to let you know the Oak Ridge studio is one of eight studios that will be closing at the end of this month.

“All audiobook recording operations will conclude in these studios on January 25, 2013.

“The Oak Ridge studio goes back several decades, and volunteers like you have been an incredibly important part of our history,” Friedman said in his letter. “We want you to continue to be part of our future as we deal with the economic and technical realities we face today — including the need to produce books faster, less expensively and with text to meet our members’ needs.

“The good news,” Friedman concluded, “is that Learning Ally’s changing production model will bring new opportunities that many volunteers have expressed interest in, and your service as a volunteer can continue for the long term. …

“Today we are rapidly developing technologies and processes to support efforts for remote recording and other virtual volunteering opportunities — enabling volunteers to contribute their time and talents from almost anywhere, at any time.”

Friedman promised to keep local volunteers informed of Learning Ally’s progress in developing those “remote tools” via email, adding his organization is hopeful it will have the tools to re-engage Oak Ridge volunteers “very quickly.”

The Learning Ally has 250 volunteers working in several areas around the region, and about 125 to 150 volunteers work weekly out of the Oak Ridge office, Morris said.

The Oak Ridge unit of Recording For The Blind was founded in 1952, and Oak Ridge’s unit was — at that time — one of only a score of units throughout America.

For years, the unit operated in cramped temporary quarters, reaching a “maximum production rate of 3,144 reading hours in 1970.” To meet the increasing demand, the Margaret Depres Weinberg Center was constructed and opened in 1971.

Margaret Weinberg, who died in 1969, was the first wife of the late Alvin Weinberg, the former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

During that same time period, Oak Ridge’s RFB tapes were sent to the Master Tape Library of Recording For The Blind, Inc., in New York City, which held 11,000 titles and was circulating about 40,000 books per year — making it the largest circulating library of free recorded educational material for blind students.

Also in the early 1970s, Recording For The Blind referenced itself as being a provider of the “vital Fourth R.”